September 2, 2014 5:03 pm
When Beijing attacks MPs for commenting on the territory, it forgets the UK has treaty obligations
The former British colony of Hong Kong has all the attributes of a liberal society except one: its people lack the ability to choose who governs them. The latest political convulsion in the territory has been caused by electoral arrangements proposed by the National People’s Congress, which would prevent democrats and others of whom China might disapprove from seeking election as chief executive in a vote of Hong Kong’s citizens.
Such vetting is more or less what happens in Iran. Sooner or later this plan, or a modification of it, will have to be voted on by Hong Kong’s legislature, and I hope a compromise can be found. The territory’s citizens remain remarkably moderate and responsible. It is not democracy that produces the sort of mass demonstrations we have recently witnessed but its denial.
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I have expressed my agreement with Andrew Li Kwok-nang, the distinguished former Chief Justice, who has written that Beijing’s views on the status of the Hong Kong judiciary raise concerns about judicial independence and therefore the integrity of the rule of law. But in the 17 years since I left the territory at the end of my term as the last British governor, I have tried to avoid being drawn into the debate about democracy there, lest my intervention complicate matters.
On this occasion my comments are not directed principally to Beijing or Hong Kong’s democrats. What a former Hong Kong governor can more legitimately do is to invite an interrogation of Britain’s sense of honour. It may not be welcome to ministers, at a time when so many appallingly difficult international issues crowd their agenda, to remind them that we have moral responsibilities for what happens in Hong Kong.
The Joint Declaration under which the territory passed from British to Chinese rule guaranteed Hong Kong’s way of life for 50 years after 1997. Deng Xiaoping’s “one country, two systems” pledge is backed by an international treaty, lodged at the UN. As successive British governments have accepted, the UK has a continuing “moral and political obligation” to ensure that China respects its commitments.
When Chinese officials attack British MPs and others for commenting on developments in Hong Kong, they ignore the fact that Britain too has treaty obligations for 50 years, which reflect what our country has said and promised in the past. Failure to do as we pledged would clearly be dishonourable.
In the 1980s and 1990s, parliament was told that the development of democratic structures underpin the territory’s stability, prosperity and limited autonomy. No one envisaged that, 30 years after the Joint Declaration, a fair electoral system would still be beyond the horizon.
Sooner or later, I assume, the British government will comment on Beijing’s plan. This would not be a provocation but a duty. No one can seriously believe that this would have commercial consequences, or that such consequences should be an overriding concern when our honour is on the line. We have a huge stake in the wellbeing of Hong Kong, with a political system in balance with its economic freedom. I hope these questions will be resolved in a way that does not jeopardise the city’s future.
China’s ascent has been a bonus for the world. It is not a threat. Surprisingly, however, it has not yet been accompanied by an accretion of China’s soft power. The way in which Beijing handles Hong Kong’s aspirations will clearly affect that.
Yet my main appeal is to Westminster not China. During a visit to a mental hospital before I left Hong Kong, a patient politely asked me how a country that prided itself on being the oldest democracy in the world had come to be handing over his city to another country with a very different system of government, without either consulting the citizens or giving them the prospect of democracy to safeguard their future. Strange, said one of my aides, that the man with the sanest question in Hong Kong is in a mental hospital.
But we did promise him democracy. We should go on making that point, ever so diplomatically. If not us, then who?
The writer was governor of Hong Kong between 1992 and 1997
